


The Red Herring

by orphan_account



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dysfunctional Relationships, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Fake Character Death, Family Drama, Family Feels, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Post-Season/Series 04, Smut, Soulmate Pain AU, Turtlecest (TMNT)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In a perfect world Raph and Leo find out they are soulmates and they can't wait to tell everyone. They aren't really sure what soulmates are but it doesn't matter because they do everything together anyways.This isn't that perfect world.(An AU where when you turn ten you start to feel your soulmates pain)Orphanedsince co-author ghosted me - Crowdog  (June 2nd, 2019)





	1. Chapter 1

January seeps into his shell through a worn heavy black jacket. Keeps the wind from biting his skin but the cold doesn’t care. The cold crawls up his sleeves and traces its finger up and down his arms. The sky is purple, a winter sunset dying behind a forest of buildings as he methodically, in a distracted trance, makes his way to Manhattan. A long walk from one warm place to another. His legs, numb to the cold, walk the path he’s walked countless times before. It’s a practiced motion now. A dance through the city to the beat of his own teeth clicking together.

 

His jeans are stiff and slightly damp. Boots are new and still uncomfortable to walk in, still foreign wearing jeans. It’s too cold to find skulls to crack, no one, not even criminals want to be out in January’s wrath. There had been more criminal action around Christmas, just because the weather was milder. Barely snowed. For some reason it was all banked for the new year.

 

Newports, half crushed, still usable, still take a light, sit nestled in the lining of his jacket. He forgot the lighter, and he can’t just ask anyone to strike one up. Casey will give him a light, Hell, he’ll smoke one too, but they’ll nurse them out on the back step for his little sister’s sake. They’ll smoke Newports under an indigo night and Casey won’t ask why he’s come around in January. Why he’s danced the long dance from home to him when the cold is out, trying to bite at his skin.

 

No phone. No time to grab it. No time to think about grabbing it. So he knocks on the metal edge of the screen door. Thud, rattle, thud, rattle, wait.

 

Three locks click and the inside door opens. A small hand snakes out from behind the door, reaches up and unlatches the lock on the screen door. Their arm is bare so they retreat back into the house the moment Raph grabs the handle and enters the kitchen.

 

Emily stands there looking up at him more like one of Casey’s friends than a monster. The television is on low in the other room, it’s the only thing illuminating the house, the only thing that shows him that her expression’s tired not annoyed. “Casey is working late” she whispers as he closes the door rubbing his hands together trying to bring blood back to his frozen hands. Her tone is bored, like she’s telling a story she’s told before.

 

“Where’s your mom?” he asks quietly, through a dry throat.

 

She points to the living room and then makes a motion of zipping her lips before leaving him there standing in the dark kitchen. One hundred needles pierce his fingers, he hits the light over the stove with shaky aim. The clock on the microwave reads that it’s nearing eleven. Monday night, school night, Emily should be in bed. Not his place say, just as Casey’s home isn’t his place to crash but here he is. Not his choice. There’s nowhere else to go, April’s gone, the Mutanimals means facing, no, seeing Mona. Nothing against her, but it’s not in the books today. The lair was suffocating him, bearing down, crumbling around the edges. He had to leave.

 

Breathe up here or drown down there.

 

“So Emily just lets big green monsters in while I’m gone” Casey remarks quietly, coming in the same door Raph had.

 

“You’re home late” he says watching the man strip off his jacket and put his lunch bucket on the counter.

 

“Sorry dear, busy day at the office” he jokes in a dead voice.

 

Casey failed his senior year, he dropped out and got a job assisting a local mechanic under the table. No one gives him shit for it, Donnie didn’t even make a comment. The only reason April salvaged her senior year was by going completely radio silent with them and doing all the extra credit under the sun. Now they’re both twenty, April’s in college and Casey is chained to his family.

 

Raph huffs and Casey settles into his own home. Lunch bucket is emptied and placed on top of the fridge, jacket taken into the next room. It’s a movie of sorts, only he’s unfocused and can’t follow the plot. Shell digging into the seat of the chair, fingers still vibrating, a pop and a hiss bring him back to the dirty kitchen strewn with orange bottles with white tops. Scary labels and chemical smells, how anyone wouldn’t be overwhelmed escapes him.

 

“You all staying warm down there?” Casey asks warming something up in the microwave. “I’ve been too busy to come around”

 

“Yeah” Raph says. Casey is pulling him out of his own mind, not asking the real questions. Asking the questions around them instead, the answers will overlap. “Donnie made us heated robe looking things that are wireless, so now we get to walk around warm at the price of looking ridiculous”

 

“Now I with I had come around”

 

“Mikey wears his shamelessly”

 

Casey stirs his food while bringing it over to the table. “That’s not surprising, how do you wear yours?”

 

“Begrudgingly” Raph snorts. “It’s fricken cold down there, Mikey is going south as soon as Leatherhead gets done hibernating”

 

“Beer?” Casey asks as he gets one for himself and Raph nods.

 

They’re both too young by someone else’s standards but Raph started drinking when he was sixteen. With tired fingers he finds the tab of his can and upends the beer in one, two, and a half gulps.

 

“You look like shit” Casey points out after he puts the can down.

 

He wants to say something cutting but he knows it’s true. Lashing out at yet another family member won’t make any of this okay. “Yeah” he agrees and their conversation dissolves into silence.

 

Unspoken he stays the night. On the couch, three feet from the ragged breathing of a dying woman. Cataracts took her sight, Parkinson's took the rest. The silent hum of her machines lull him off to sleep on the couch. He stares up at the popcorn ceiling, pretends he’s looking down on a million little buildings. How nice it’d be to float away.

 

.

.

.

 

“Where are your pajamas” Emily asks. She’s dressed for the day already, jeans, a t-shirt with a cartoon character. Mikey would probably know the name of it, since he never outgrew cartoons and nice pure things.

 

Hoovering over him as the brightly lit room tries to keep his eyes from opening. He slept in his coat, it’s twisted around him. Digging into his arms. Constricting. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

 

“Nuh uh” she hums “MLK Day. No school”

 

“Raphael is that you?” a rasping breath calls out. Casey’s mother is lucid. She recognizes his voice through the clouds only she can see.

 

Eyes, grey and unfocused meet his. “Yeah, just popped in last night”

 

“How are you?” she asks staring a little past him.

 

Drowning, choking, trying to float away. “Good” he says and gets up to stretch, fixing with jacket, knocking the sleep out of his body, straightening his blue cotton jeans “Where’s Casey?” he directs the question to Emily.

 

“Shop” she supplies. More focused on the menu of her video game.

 

Raph nods looking towards the kitchen. “I like you, always straight to the point. No small talk”

 

“Yep”

 

Casey grew up and left Raph behind he remembers, stumbling into the kitchen on cramping legs. He’s not bitter, he can’t be. Parkinson’s, a little sister, a dead dad. Raph had one of those. A note, scribbled on the back of a receipt on the table says _Donnie called, call him back asap_. An anchor in disguise pulling him back underwater, back to the lair.

 

When had that call happened, it didn’t matter, the clock told him he slept for twelve hours. The clock tells lies. Emily says clocks can’t lie, they’re not sentient. Raph decides Emily is a liar too.

 

The note slips his mind as he crumples it in one hand and crams it in his coat pocket. Stuck here until sun down with no intention of talking to any of his brothers. Not now, he needs time. The clock’s ticking up to one. He eats a cold store brand bagel straight out of the bag and sits on the couch next to Emily, she’s playing a violent game. Blasts the face off of a police officer with an assault rifle before pausing to give him a weird look.

 

“We have lettuce in the produce drawer” she remarks eyes darting to his bagel, forefinger tapping, fidgeting, with the controller.

 

Chewing methodically he stares back at her. “Shut up or I’ll tell Casey what games you play while he’s gone” he says around a mouthful.

 

She shrugs and goes back to playing. It was a thing, if she saw Raph eating something that wasn’t a vegetable, or fruit, or whatever the hell she deemed turtle worthy food she’d let them know where to find it. A funny little game she played with him. Only him. Emily is like Casey in that way. She’s blunt as stump and critical as hell. He makes a point to make sure there isn’t anything on his face before he visits Casey. She’ll point it out. Even if it’s blood. That makes it worse.

 

One becomes half past one. His eyes glazed over while he was sitting silently with Emily, watching her play. Casey has another controller, but he likes watching. With a sigh he heaves himself off the couch and towards the landline in the hall. Shag carpet, ripped straight from the seventies cushions his foot steps as he takes the phone into the bathroom for some privacy. A delusional thought with paper thin walls. Gunshots pepper the background. Emily won’t go quietly into the virtual night.

 

He has all his brother’s numbers memorized, but it takes him a few attempts on Casey’s phone. His fingers are thick and the number pad is tiny.

 

“ _Raph_ ” Donnie exclaims picking up on the first ring.

 

“I called” he says sitting on the toilet lid of the world’s smallest bathroom. “What’s so important?”

 

“ _We were worried about you_ ”

 

“I’m at Casey’s” he says, already tiring of the conversation.

 

“ _When are you coming home?_ ”

 

“I don’t know” he breathes out already drained from this game. “Okay?”

 

“ _Raph-_ ”

 

Pulling the phone away he hit end call and sat there in Casey’s bathroom. It rang immediately and the number on the caller ID matched Donnie’s. It rang again, he wavered but decided he wanted to answer it before Emily grabbed the line on another handset.

 

“What” he asks.

 

“ _What happened yesterday?_ ”

 

“It’s none of your business”

 

“ _You’re scaring us, Raph, you punched Mikey, what’s going on?_ ”

 

“Don’t see how that makes it your business”

 

There was a pause, talking too far away to make out. “ _You should come home_ ”

 

“It’s daytime”

 

There’s a few grunts on the other end. “ _You left during the daytime_ ” Mikey says quickly. Guilt fires through his spine hearing Mikey’s voice. Part of the reason he left was that guilt, the inability to explain himself or why his two younger sibling were pissing him off so much.

 

“Well, that’s because I’m a moron” Raph huffs as Donnie takes back the phone.

 

“ _We could come get you in the shell raiser_ ” Donnie tries.

 

Frustration boils under his skin. “Just, leave it, I’ll come home when I come home”. He presses end call too hard, the phone creaks in his grip. “Fuck” he breathes out.

 

.

.

.

 

Daytime bleeds into night and back again three or four times before Casey says anything. Fall outs had happened in the past, Raph taking off wasn’t unusual. There’s no anger in Raph though, not this time. He burrows himself into Casey’s family. Emily practices her clarinet in front of Raph and her mom. In the evenings when Casey doesn’t work late, and Emily abides by some form of bedtime they smoke half a pack each and talk about work. Their voices tip toe away from troubled and cracked topics. The costs of funerals, the ominous rift between Raph and his brothers.

 

Whispers are slipped in, Casey sends a lot more texts, his brothers asking about him. He’s glad his phone is at the lair, dangerous as it is to not have it on him. It’s a chain attached to the seabed, just short enough to keep him from breathing and just long enough his hand breaks the surface only to be stung by the air.

 

Raph rubs his thighs while eating dinner with Casey, sore from lack of weight training. Nothing heavy enough in the house to even jimmy rig a set up if he had the mind to. It’s a Friday, Emily is staying at a friend’s house. The week went by too fast. Sunday night was a fever dream, dancing through frozen streets and burning pain. Today it’s raw and cracked. Refusing to scab. Refusing to heal, to be forgotten.

 

“Soulmate doing squats again?” Casey asks half joking.

 

Raph scoffs. “No”

 

“Are you okay?” Casey asks like a big brother, and Raph cringes. Feels his chest sink. “I mean, normally by now you guys all make up...” he says intending for Raph to tell him the story.

 

“We ain’t fighting” he says quietly. Dinner isn’t much touched, he isn’t hungry, he’s hungry for another cigarette or a drink. Something warmer than beer.

 

Silverware scrapes against plates forming some rhythm in a chaos of thoughts. Fighting would be easy, a known demon, a tired foe. Hope is a dragon. It hoards your life away.

 

“What’s going on?”

 

Raph stays silent hoping Casey will drop it, or that he could avoid it but it doesn’t happen. At some point Casey Jones turned into a father and Raph keeps forgetting it. He keeps forgetting that Casey grew up and somewhere down in the water he’s still fifteen. The world is still as fresh and daunting as it was four years ago. He just got better at pretending.

 

“Did something happen Sunday?” he tries again.

 

“Just” Raph starts thinking back on how everything piled up until he broke. “Donnie is still looking, and...I just lost it”

 

Casey’s expression becomes somber pretty quickly. “Oh”

 

“Speaking of soulmates doing squats” Raph changes the subject. “You ever feel it?”

 

Casey takes a moment to think while chewing his food. “Eh, maybe in my whole life I have felt it five or six times. Hard to know what’s me being clumsy and not realizing I hurt myself until later. Why?”

 

“I just wondered, never heard you talk about it before”

 

“You guys have soulmates right?” Casey asks. “I feel bad for the lady on the other end of you”

 

“He doesn’t care much these days”

 

“He?” Casey asks before realizing something more prominent about the statement. “Wait. You’ve met your soulmate!?”

 

Raph nods curtly. “Surprise?”

 

“Surprise? Fucking hell man. You should be shouting joy from the rooftops. You met your soulmate!”

 

He grimaces at Casey’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, well, it’s old news to me”

 

“What do you mean old news? When did this happen even?” Casey practically yells. “I’m your best friend and you didn’t tell me immediately?”

 

“Who said anything about you being my best friend” Raph rebuttals.

 

“Oh shut the hell up. Who is he then”

 

Raph bites the inside of his cheek, he doesn’t really want to tell Casey any part of this. “I don’t want your pity”

 

“What?”

 

“I’ll tell you, but I don’t want any of your pity” Raph repeats eyeing his best friend. (Alright he admits it, Casey is his best friend, but Casey can’t know that. It would go to his head).

 

Casey raises a brow. “Uh look if you’re gay...you’re gay I don’t give a crap”

 

“It’s not…I'm not...nevermind” Raph takes a steadying breath. “My soulmate is... was Leo”

 

Neither of them move. Casey sits in suspended animation. “That’s not funny” he says seriously.

 

“I’m not making a joke”

 

“Like hell you are” Casey snaps. “What the fuck Raph?”

 

He feels like shouting but he doesn’t, he's too tired, he knows why Casey would assume he’s lying. “I wouldn’t fucking joke about this, Jesus. You seriously think I would say that as a joke?” he asks in disbelief.

 

Casey’s expression loosens slightly. “Fuck”

 

“Yeah” Raph says, implications hanging in the air.

 

“Are-”

 

“Remember what I said about pity” Raph warns with a menacing face.

 

Casey closes his mouth but doesn’t stay silent for long. “So then Leo is definitely dead, huh?”

 

“Yeah”

 

“And Donnie is still looking for Leo” Casey continues.

 

“That’s what’s going on” Raph adds. “They were both planning something, another EPF base that might have files. Donnie thinks Leo might have been taken, that he might be held somewhere...”

 

“And...”

 

“I don’t feel anything” Raph says with resignation. “It happened a little bit after I got off the roof, I hurt so bad, for the both of us. Then in a flash I felt half the pain fall out of me, just, one second I can feel him up there, taking it, giving it back. Then nothing. Only my own injuries”

 

“I don’t know what to say Raph”

 

Raph shrugs. “I guess I’m glad he died quick, I didn’t feel any worse right before it happened”. He leaves out how much he thought about it. How long it took him to find one good thing to hold onto.

 

The lasagna Casey had warmed them up was now stone cold but Raph picked up his fork and moved it around a little bit. “I just accepted it, right then. I didn’t even go through the stages. I just knew he was gone and that was it”

 

“Raph...you need to tell them” he says finally.

 

“I know”

 

“Then why don’t you? Come on man, the only reason I’m not mad is because I know this must bite but...they need to know. They need to move on”

 

“I know” Raph says tightly.

 

Casey pinches his eyebrows together. “Then why don’t you tell them?”

 

“Because” he starts “because its messed up”

 

“What?”

 

“Incest, Casey” Raph puts his fork down and rubs his hand over his face. “There’s a reason we didn’t tell anyone!”

 

Casey shakes his head. “Fuck ‘em if they give you shit for it”

 

Raph glares.

 

“Alright, not the best phrasing, but seriously if that’s their hang up then it’s their problem. Not yours”

 

“Shit you really are a dad”

 

“And a damn good one” Casey tacks on with a smirk.

 

Raph smiles slightly, for a second the atmosphere is lighter.

 

“I don’t want to talk about the deep shit” Raph states and Casey nods. “And I don’t want anyone asking”

 

“You can tell me anything” Casey says. He stands up and grabs a six pack out of the fridge. “Just you, me, and these six fellas”

 

The six cylinders look tempting.

 

Casey brushes his long hair out of his face he leans back and looks past Raph at the wall.

 

“What?” Raph asks a little irritated.

 

The man’s eyes dart to his. “I’m trying to think of what I missed. You two, you either hated each other or were a united front. Hell, I used to think you guys just liked kicking the shit out of each other the way Leo antagonized you and the way you’d go off the handles”.

 

“We’ve always fought” Raph supplies not sure where Casey is heading. “Even when we were...before we started hating each other”

 

“There was a time you two didn’t hate each other?” Casey says almost laughing. “Come on, at least tell me that story”

 

He reaches for the six pack and breaks one off. “Alright”. Might as well float in something nice before he drowns in what’s to come. “I’ll tell you how it was...”

 

.

.

.

 

Fourteen years ago Raph and Leo stood in the hallway screaming at each other. They had to pick out their bedroom. It was their birthday present. Sensei had made four rooms in the lair for his four growing sons on their seventh mutation day.

 

Four rooms, two on each side, and a bathroom at the end of the hall.

 

Donnie claimed one of the ones furthest from the bathroom, right front, and Mikey claimed back left next to the bathroom. It left two rooms opposite each other on the diagonal, and a daunting decision for Raph and Leo.

 

“No you pick!” he screamed at Leo who crossed his arms stubbornly.

 

“Not until you pick!” he shouted back.

 

Their father stood silently observing the interaction with a small smile before he interrupted. “My sons, what is the matter?”

 

“Raph won’t pick which room we’re sharing” Leo tattled dutifully.

 

Raph sputtered at the accusation and pointed at Leo. “He said he was gonna pick!”

 

“Did not!”

 

“Did too!”

 

“Sharing?” he asked, however not surprised. Raph and Leo were always next to each other, where one was the other wasn’t far behind. Both Mikey and Donnie had interests outside their own brothers while Raph and Leo did every thing together. “My sons you no longer have to share a room together”.

 

“We know Sensei” they both said in unison before looking back at each other and saying “Now pick!”

 

The rat stroked his beard in thought. “So you two still want to share a room?” he asked.

 

They both squinted angrily at each other and nodded.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because we’re Big Brother Best Friends!” they both said as if it explained anything.

 

It concerned him for a moment that Leo and Raph were forming a group outside their brothers. Though they never excluded their siblings from anything, it was still surprising how much closer they were. “Okay, how about this, both of you, look at me” they did “close your eyes” they closed them tight. “Alright now, if you want the room across from Mikey then nod”. Neither of them nodded. “If you want the room across from Donnie then nod” They both nodded. “Alright open your eyes”

 

Two sets of expectant eyes looked up at him.

 

“You both picked the room across from Donnie” he reported hoping it would solve the conflict.

 

It did not.

 

“That’s the room I was going to pick if you hadn’t taken so long picking!” Leo shouted.

 

“You only picked that room because I picked it!” Raph shot back.

 

Mikey and Donnie came out into the hallway to witness Leo and Raph tackle each over who picked what first and why. Sensei placed a paw over his face and sighed. No parenting books had prepared him for the way problem solving is handled among seven year olds.

 

.

.

.

 

“Big Brother Best Friends?” Casey says slowly as Raph pauses for another swig of beer.

 

“We were seven!” Raph defends. “And we mostly called it BBBF for short”

 

“That makes it better?”

 

“Shut up and let me get back to my story” Raph grumbles feeling a little heat in his cheeks. “Now, like I said these were the good days, and we were close back then, believe it or not”

 

.

.

.

 

They took the room across from Donnie. It wasn’t crowded. The beds were dismantled bunk beds so all Sensei had to do was take the bed out of the one room and place it on top of the other. Sensei had expected a fight over who would get to be top bunk but Leo took one look up the ladder and decided he liked the bottom one more. It was also the first small indication that Leo had a fear of heights.

 

Too many nights were spent on the bottom bunk with sheets hanging down from the top to form a tent. Inside said tent sat two turtles reading comic books with battery powered lanterns, laughing without voice and usually falling asleep on the same bed.

 

At ages nine if was clear that his sons were all at different levels. Donnie was on material fit for a Junior or Senior in high school. Leo was very good at reading and he was very bad at math, he could read at high school level but still didn’t quiet understand how to long divide. Raph was a few grades above his age when it came to reading and math, almost the same as Mikey. The only difference was nothing in the world could keep Mikey focused for more than a few minutes at a time.

 

Donnie had to be tutored separately. He was too advanced, and would soon have to expand upon his education by himself. Mikey needed the one on one to stay focused. However Raph and Leo worked best together. Leo helped Raph with some of the reading, and Raph put math into kid terms that Leo could understand. Together they got through Sensei’s lessons without too many problems.

 

That was how life played out. When Sensei wasn’t gone getting food and supplies, they were expected to do work for their studies or chores. He left them tasks to do around the lair while he was gone. However Leo and Raph would combine all their chores and do them all together or trade off because Raph hated doing the laundry but didn’t mind climbing a step stool to dust off any lamps around the lair.

 

It was Donnie who accidentally sparked the life changing question on their ninth mutation day. They were sat around the kitchen table, savoring cake.

 

“Sensei?” Donnie asked.

 

“Yes my son?”

 

“Do we have soulmates?”

 

The silence was abrupt. All of them knew what soulmates were, in the vague sense. The same way they knew what taxes were. It was something they knew of, but didn’t know exactly how it worked or impacted them.

 

“I do not have the answer to that” he said thoughtfully.

 

“Oh”

 

The rat studied Donnie for a moment. “Why do you ask my son?”

 

“I was reading about it, and when you turn ten your connection to you soulmate opens” Donnie said quickly “So if we have soulmates we’ll know when our tenth birthday is!”

 

Sensei seemed relieved by this. “I hadn’t even thought of that, but yes, if you have soulmates, then when you turn ten you will feel it”.

 

“What does it feel like?” Mikey asked. “Does it hurt?”

 

“No, no, it feels like...” the rat thought for a moment and they all leaned a little further into the table. “It feels like your chest is on fire for a moment before it becomes pleasantly warm and then it’s as if nothing happened at all”

 

“That sounds like it hurts” Raph argued placing a hand on the front of his shell.

 

They all nodded in agreement.

 

“Trust me my sons, it is not painful, in a way it is comforting”

 

“Did you ever meet your soulmate, Sensei?” Leo asked curiously.

 

Sensei shook his head and smiled. “No, and not many people do. The world is a very big place. I fell in love with a woman and had a beautiful daughter. I can only hope my soulmate found someone who makes them as happy as Shen made me”.

 

“Does soulpain hurt?” Donnie asks since the flood gates are open for discussion.

 

“Yes, of course. But my soulmate, whoever they are, leads a gentle life so I do not feel them often”

 

“I don’t want to turn ten, turning ten sounds painful” Mikey complained and again they all agreed.

 

“We might not have soulmates though so maybe it won’t be painful at all” Donnie suggested and that seemed to give Mikey some hope.

 

Later that night, Raph climbed down from top bunk and sat cross legged from Leo. They talked until every other word was a yawn about soulmates and soulpain and even having soulmates.

 

“What if we have the same birthday?” Raph asked in a hushed but excited whisper. “It’d be Big Brother Birthday!”

 

“BBB-Day!” Leo whispered happily.

 

Raph frowned. “But that’s like a year away!” he complained.

 

.

.

.

 

“You guys were really into the letter B”

 

“Speaking of B” Raph stares into his empty can, Leo's nine year old voice echos in the back of his head. Wind ripping down storm drains taking him someplace else. “I’m out of b-eer”

 

“You drank five out of the six pack man, what kind of mutant liver do you have?” Casey groans as he retrieves another six pack from the fridge. “After this we’re out of cold beer” he says and Raph shrugs.

 

“I’ll chug warm beer at this point” he says sullenly. “Talking about this is stirring up so much I’d pushed away, you know?”

 

Casey nods sadly. “Yeah, I can’t say I know how you feel, just sounds rough”

 

The night is still young but all Raph wants to do is throw himself outside. Scrape his feet on the cement and let the cold numb him all over again.

 

“I didn’t know Shen wasn’t Splinter’s soulmate” Casey breaks into his fog. “He had a very mature explanation for you guys though. Preparing you for the possibility that you might not have a soulmate while also showing you the reality”.

 

“Yeah” Raph agrees. The rat did something right.

 

.

.

.

 

It was shortly after their ninth mutation day that Sensei began training them in basic fighting katas. Leo and Raph immediately paired up together. While their younger brothers had gone through a growth spurt leaving Raph and Leo about the same height, Mikey was two inches taller and Donnie was head taller than Mikey. It wasn’t fair at the time, in the superficial standards that children held. Despite being shorter they were a great team of two. Raph was strong and Leo was quick.

 

Their ninth year was by far their best. Training together, playing games together, still learning together. Any anxieties they held about turning ten slowly diminished as the year marched on.

 

It was bliss.

 

Then Leo yelled out at breakfast clutching his chest and bending forward. Raph was by him in an instant but Leo already jumped out of his seat and started jumping up and down excitedly.

 

“I’m ten!” he shouted and the rest of his brothers became very excited but Leo looked right at Raph. “You gotta turn ten today too okay?” he ordered.

 

Raph nodded while everyone else looked confused. “Big Brother Birthday” he said as way of explanation. “Duh”.

 

Donnie groaned at their antics. Sensei decided since it was Leo’s birthday they could have the day off, even though their tenth mutation day was going to be the next day.

 

A little before lunch Raph felt his chest burn and his dream of sharing a birthday with Leo was fulfilled. They excitedly ran to Sensei and their brothers. After that they gave each other a complicated high five that seemed to sting a little more than usual.

 

They ate soup for lunch and they both burned their tongues despite Leo blowing on his soup for fourteen seconds in between spoonfuls. “Yes I counted” Leo had complained.

 

Donnie turned ten after dinner while they were watching a movie. He immediately went to record data about the event leaving everyone confused.

 

Mikey made it just under the wire, turning ten at eleven fifty five that night. He knocked on everyone’s door.

 

A little disappointed that they actually all had the same birthday, Leo and Raph agreed that at least they were confirmed to be the two oldest. They were still big brother best friends.

 

The curtain fell the next day, it was their tenth mutation day and Leo entered the kitchen too fast slamming his foot into the table leg. He immediately grabbed his foot, and started hopping up and down on one leg. Too busy with his own actual injury to realize Raph was grabbing his own uninjured foot in the kitchen doorway. He was just walking and then suddenly it was like a baseball hit him right on the tip of the toe. The pain had been throbbing and sharp.

 

It took a few seconds to understand, but he peaked at his toes and they are perfectly fine. He felt Leo stub his toe.

 

That’s not possible. Even though it hurt, putting weight or not putting weight on his foot didn’t change the pain level. Fear took hold of him. He’d done something wrong because he could feel Leo’s pain.

 

Sensei heard Leo hollering and was soon at his side looking at the injury. The skin was broken and there was a little blood. Some ointment, gauze, and an ice pack later Leo (and Raph) felt a bit better.

 

Raph stayed away at all costs. He looked into every room before entering. He went full ninja the whole day. When it was time to eat cake Sensei found him hiding in the Dojo but did not question it. Kids were weird sometimes. He still sat next to Leo but he couldn’t make eye contact with him. Raph had never felt so guilty.

 

All of them watch Spongebob after dinner, Leo kept his foot elevated. Raph sat on the opposite side of the living room. Donnie and Mikey gave them both weird looks but stayed silent.

 

When if was time for bed Raph helped Leo to their room. He didn’t say a word when he climbed the latter to top bunk and ignored every time Leo whispered his name.

 

Raph curled himself up into a ball and faced the wall. He cried silently until he felt his toes ache and burn. Leo was climbing the ladder, slowly and uneasily because he was still nervous about heights.

 

“Raph?” he croaked. He got on the bed and crawled over to him. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry”

 

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

 

Leo pushed on his shell and Raph sat up. He wiped his face on his arm and looked at Leo in the dark. The only light they had was the single night light on the wall opposite them.

 

“Leo I think I did something really bad” he choked out.

 

“What did you do?”

 

Shaking his head, feeling fresh tears well up in his eyes he couldn’t bring himself to explain. Instead he held his forearm out for Leo to see and then gripped it as hard as he could. Then Leo grabbed his own untouched forearm hissing in pain.

 

Then his face dropped in realization. “Oh” Leo said quietly.


	2. Chapter 2

“And that was that” Raph proclaims. “I need a cigarette, or twenty if we’re going to continue this”

 

Casey has his head in his hands. He runs his fingers through his black hair. “Okay, you take a smoke break, outside Raph, and I’m going to call Emily and say goodnight”

 

“Alright”

 

“Oh and my phone is blowing up with texts so maybe call one of your brothers?”

 

Raph shakes his head sluggishly. Colors in the kitchen twirl together in a motion blur. “Or, I call Emily and you call my brothers?”

 

Casey gives him a disapproving look and gets up with his cell phone. Gravity almost takes Raph, it pulls him back into the kitchen chair but he persists. Landline, Newports, junk drawer, lighter, backdoor.

 

The smokes fills him up. Takes the sour taste out of his mouth. Sour with memories and Leo. Fuck fate. Fuck Soulmates. He dials a number in a buzzed haze.

 

Straight to voicemail “ _You’ve reached H-_ ”

 

He hits end call, Raph breathes out smoke.

 

Purposely, he dials Mikey’s phone number. “ _Hey Raph_ ” his little brother greets with the most exaggerated everything-is-cool voice he’s ever heard.

 

“’Sup Mikey, Casey said you two have been asking me to call” Raph returns in a similar put on tone.

 

“ _Yeah...we’re worried Raph_ ”

 

“I’m fine” he takes a long inhale from his cigarette. “How are things, baby brother?”

 

There’s a pause. “ _Raph?_ ”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“ _Are you high?_ ”

 

Raph laughs once, and it's almost more of a cough. “No. Little drunk though” he adds cheerily.

 

“ _Where are you?_ ”

 

“Casey’s”

 

“ _Don’t leave Casey’s high or drunk_ ”

 

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asks defensively

 

“ _I’ll tell D that you’re drunk_ ” Mikey threatens.

 

“Fine, I won’t leave, and you don’t be a little tattle tail”

 

“ _Alright_ ”

 

They sit on dead air for a few moments, he watches the cigarette in his hands burn down to the butt. Mikey’s out there in the forest of buildings. The wind is hitting the speaker, there’s traffic nearby. No one talks, the silence was loud enough. Must be alone, Donnie must’ve stayed in. He flicks most of his cigarette into the snow and ends the call without another word.

 

Casey is back at the table, he stretches, pops his back as Raph collapses back into his chair.

 

“I called Mikey” Raph reports so Casey won’t ask. “Little shit knew I was drunk”

 

“Well, you are drunk” Casey reasons. “What did he say?”

 

“Said he would tell Donnie” Raph says, words starting to slur. “Unless I agreed to not go anywhere”

 

“We don’t have to keep talking about this tonight, if you can’t”

 

He thinks about it for a few seconds. “I don’t know if telling you all this is helping or hurting”

 

All he hears in the machines in the other room. All he wants is for this to have never happened in the first place.

 

“Everything became so fucked after that point I mean… we were ten. No one is attracted to anyone when they’re ten ...and fate tells us we’re suppose to be kissing and making googly eyes at each other?”

 

Casey nods sympathetically. “I can’t say I’ve ever had to think about it, but yeah, I mean at ten kids are still all grossed out about sex”

 

Raph takes a shaky breath. “So we weren’t stupid you know? We knew it was wrong...”

 

.

.

.

 

After they found out they were soulmates Raph dragged Leo’s pillow up to the top bunk for him and they slept back to back. Paralyzed with the fear of having done something wrong, but at least they both did something wrong. So they were in it together.

 

Leo went ahead and asked Sensei if brothers could be soulmates. He hadn’t told Raph that he was going to do it. He had most certainly not told Raph he was going to ask Sensei right at the breakfast table.

 

Their leader hadn’t always been the most tactful.

 

Their father choked a little and Raph's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. “Come again, my son” he asked while clearing his throat.

 

“Can brothers be soulmates?” Leo repeated, a little less confident now that their father was coughing.

 

“No, they can not” Sensei said.

 

“Why not?” Leo asked.

 

“Because it would be incest” Donnie blurted out.

 

“Donatello!” Sensei scolded. “Where did you learn such a word”

 

The young genius seemed to shrink into his shell. “The ‘I’ section of the dictionary” he said quietly.

 

Their father sighed.

 

“What’s incest?” Mikey asked their dad.

 

Raph and Leo looked at each other but neither of them had heard of the word. Meanwhile their father set down his fork and shut his eyes. “It is being in love with someone you are related to”.

 

“Oh” Mikey said.

 

Raph thought that didn’t sound too bad, he loved all his brothers, even Mikey. He turned to look at Leo who smiled weakly, surprised in Sensei's answer as well.

 

“So when I tell Donnie I love him, we are doing incest?” Mikey asked.

 

Donnie giggled into his hands but stopped abruptly under Sensei’s glare.

 

“No, you love your brother like you love all your brothers and your father” he tried to explain.

 

“I’m confused” Mikey complained setting his chin on the table.

 

“There are different ways to love someone” the rat said looking at Mikey. “The way you love your family and the way you love your soulmate are different”

 

“What’s different?” Leo asked, at this point he had abandoned eating his breakfast.

 

“Telling your brother you love him is fine because really what you are saying is that you care about him” Sensei explained. “Your soulmate is your other half. When you love your soulmate you want to … kiss them”

 

Raph scrunched his brows together. “We kiss”

 

“On the cheek, or the top of the head... and soulmates don’t just kiss...” he looked at his sons at a lost for words.

 

“They adult kiss” Donnie whispered loudly.

 

“There’s different types of kissing!?” Mikey exclaimed. “What’s adult kissing?”

 

“Sex” Donnie blurted out, but before their father could scold him for it there was an uproar.

 

“That’s gross!” Raph shouted while Mikey and Leo made disgusted faces.

 

“While this was not the appropriate thing to bring up at the breakfast table” Sensei said sternly in Donnie’s direction. “That is correct, in a way”.

 

Raph and Leo shared and equally shocked face. They didn’t want to have sex with each other, that was gross. Though they still hadn't really ironed out exactly what sex was.

 

“So Leonardo, to answer your question, no brothers cannot be soulmates”

 

Leo nodded without comment but Donnie picked up on something. “Why, did you want Raphie to be your soulmate?” he teased.

 

Sensei yelled something but Raph was already out of his seat attacking Donnie. They both slammed into the kitchen floor in a mess of limbs.

 

“Ew Raph and Leo are going to adult kiss?” Mikey exclaimed. Leo was still glued to his seat watching Donnie and Raph fight. He felt every hit both received and given.

 

“Enough!” Sensei ordered as he pressed down on a nerve in both their necks. Luckily Mikey had been too busy peering over the table at Raph and Donnie to notice Leo flinch with them. “Donatello, what a horrible thing to say to your brothers. Apologize”

 

Donnie stood up sheepishly. “Sorry Leo, sorry Raph” he muttered.

 

“Raphael, while I understand what Donatello said made you upset, violence is not the answer” he scolded. “Use your words in the future”.

 

“Hai, Sensei” Raph grumbled still staring daggers at Donnie.

 

“Good” he said looking down at his sons. “Donatello, go to your room, I will have a word with you in private about the things you have been reading. Raphael, since your fighting made a mess of the kitchen, you will tidy up. Understood?”

 

“Hai, Sensei” both boys said clearly. Donnie walked quickly back to his room and Raph started picking up the stack of napkins that had fallen on the floor.

 

It was too late. Donnie and Mikey had the weapon against Raph from that day forward. Leo and him were paranoid now. What was brotherly and what was love? If they sat next to each other during a movie all it took was Donnie and Mikey making kissy faces at them and they would sit apart from each other, ashamed. Raph always reacted outwardly, he’d chase after his younger brothers if they made a comment and Leo no longer tagged along. Every time Leo would freeze, stutter a comeback at the most.

 

“I don’t like you like that” Leo whispered up to him in the middle of the night a month later. “I don’t want to be your soulmate, I want to be your brother”

 

Raph remained silent on his top bunk.

 

Leo sat up and leaned out from under the bottom bunk. “Raph, you still want to be brothers right?” he whispered full of hurt.

 

“Yeah, I do” he whispered back after a moment. His throat felt tight.

 

“So maybe we just stay brothers” Leo whispered. “Should we tell Sensei?”

 

Raph leaned out over the edge of his bunk to look at Leo. “Sensei can’t know we’re soulmates Leo” he whispered earnestly. “Sensei wouldn’t let us be brothers anymore”

 

“What do you think he’d do if he found out?”

 

“He’d probably kill us or worse, ban us from talking to each other”

 

“What if he made one of use leave?” Leo asked horrified.

 

Raph pushed himself back fully on his mattress and sighed. “So let’s just keep it to ourselves, no one needs to know”

 

“Donnie and Mikey...” Leo continued after a moment. “They’d tell on us, wouldn’t they?”

 

“Probably”

 

Leo groaned. “Raphie, Sensei is a ninja master! How are we suppose to pretend everything is normal when it’s not?”

 

Raph didn’t say anything because why couldn’t they just pretend it wasn’t happening.

 

“I have a plan” Leo said after a minute. “A secret plan”

 

It was some plan alright. They’d play up the sibling rivalry. If they couldn’t pretend everything was exactly the same, they would make things different on purpose.

 

A promise was whispered that night. A promise to play the game. Starting the next day they would start fighting each other on everything. They would go from BBBF’s to jerks.

 

The Red Herring was born.

 

.

.

.

 

“You two were more than jerks to each other” Casey remarks and Raph smiles at the man’s blunt observation.

 

“Slow down there Sherlock” Raph warns. “Were you listening? It was all part of the plan”

 

“You and Leo would murder each other with words dude” Casey says in disbelief. “You’ve punched his lights out a few times, that was an act?”

 

Raph cringes internally. Sometimes they did accidentally go too far, and they reacted too severely. The lines sometimes blurred between the game and reality. “We didn’t have any other choices”

 

“So you just decided to start hating each other and kicking each others asses all the time from that point on?” Casey asks in disbelief.

 

“No...you see Leo was a clever little shit” Raph says fondly. “So he scripted us a few fights, not severe, like getting on each others nerves. We both decided that the interests we had that didn’t overlap needed to be played up. So Leo got real big into Space Heros and Ninjistu. And I got into wrestling and the drums. We spent less time together, a little more time bickering and a month later my top bunk is taken into the room down the hall”

 

He stays silent in thought remembering those days. Hard to believe it was eight years ago.

 

“It got more severe the more we realized how bad incest was” Raph admits. “And we talked about it, because that’s a family breaker right there. So we started hating each other”

 

“Dude”

 

“Yeah, but it wasn’t real. We knew it wasn’t real”

 

Casey still looks at him with a mix of pity and disgust. Not at him but at the situation his friend was in. “What did you whisper sorry to each other afterwards or something?”

 

Raph thinks on it for a moment. Cracking open another beer he decides that is sort of accurate. “I mean…. Okay we could feel each other’s pain right? So we had a little system, left forearm to ask, right to respond. I would dig into my left forearm after a fight, that was my way of asking if we were okay. If he dug into his right forearm once, we were okay, twice we were going to talk”

 

“That’s….” Casey began not even sure how to put it into words. “An interesting way to use that ability”

 

“Our wrapping covered the bruises too”

 

Their conversation died down and Raph started rubbing his right forearm under the table. Casey collects their dishes and puts them in the sink, he runs some water over them and Raph stares out into the distance in thought. He decides he won’t tell Casey that he still digs into his left forearm at night, waiting, hoping to feel something in his right.

 

“You need to tell them Raph” Casey brings it up again. “I know you don’t want to but it’s not as bad as you made it out to be-”

 

“I… it’s not that simple” Raph snaps. “Don’t stand there and tell me what to do like you know everything”

 

Casey closed his mouth but crossed his arms and stood at the table like a disapproving father figure. “There better be a real good reason you aren’t telling them, because right now it’s making you a dick”

 

Raph takes a shaky breath. “You said earlier that nothing I say about this will freak you out”

 

“I did”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Casey shrugs and sits down. “If I was going to freak out I would have done it when you said Leo was your soulmate”

 

“What if I told you I had sex with Leo” Raph says at his beer as he raises it to his lips but looks at Casey as he finishes. Part of him wants his friend to be disgusted and shocked. Casey hides it well.

 

“I don’t think it’s my place, shit man I mean Leo’s-”

 

“What if I told you I had sex with my own brother” he says louder. And Casey stares at him with a blank face. “What if I told you I fucked my brother and I enjoyed it? Would you really still look at me the same if I told you I fucked my brother?”. He was yelling. Not that he meant to. He had too many beers and now his mind was sour and his tongue was lined with thorns.

 

“No, man” Casey says into the ringing silence. “I wouldn’t”

 

“And neither would they” Raph stands up too fast, he grabs the table edge until the black around his eyes start sliding away. “I’m going for a walk”

 

He straightens out his coat and walks past Casey who stays seated at the table, something resigned about his face. Knowing he can’t keep Raph in the house if he wanted to.

 

Halfway out the door he turns back to his last friend in the world. “Casey”

 

“Yeah, Raph?”

 

“Thanks for telling me the truth”

 

.

.

.

 

Snow mutes Manhattan. Every fat fluffy snowflake floats down so slow that if he stares without focus he can trick his mind into thinking they’re floating up. It wasn’t snowing earlier, and now that he wants to fly away it comes down in dense curtains. Collecting on every flat surface. Hushing every sharp noise.

 

The worst days of his life were weighed down in snow.

 

It was carrying Leo, nearly dead, through the snow when they were fifteen. His blood leaking down his shell onto his back. Certain in a way that he was carrying a corpse not his brother because he can’t feel anything. There’s no pain except his own. Nine again and free from the burden of anyone else and he hated it. Snow peppered his face that day. It was so cold the air burned his throat, and he had to breathe hard and deep, running with Leo on his shell.

 

Those days morphed into a long winter sitting next to a tub.

 

Watching snow outside a tiny window or watching Leo barely breathe. He wanted to reach into the tub and pull him out. Scream until Leo woke up. It had been months. The snow was starting to melt and it wasn’t fair.

 

It was the worst pain he’d experienced, Leo woke up and he fell off the stool in a silent scream. His leg was fucked. It felt like every nerve was pinched and torn.

 

That pain didn’t belong to him so he pushed past it and crawled over to the tub, he grabbed Leo’s face, upsetting the water, sending little waves towards the porcelain sides.

 

His eye’s blinked open and he made a noise between a whine and “hello”. Raph never felt so horrible about being relieved.

 

He orbited Leo. Mikey called him Mommy Raph, but he didn’t care, no teasing would make him abandon Leo. Monitoring. Watching. Every interaction was an event. It was necessary. If he cried out unexpectedly. If someone pieced together the forbidden puzzle it was over.

 

It was a double edged sword. Emotionally they stayed so far away from each other. Five years worth of anger and fights, then fear because the first two things were just an act. The ever prominent fear that filled every room they were in together. That fear of discovery.

 

It wasn’t snowing the night he helped Leo into bed. Feeling every muscle shake, feeling Leo cling to him through the pain they both could feel. No one knew it the way they did. They couldn’t. It was their curse after all. It was their burden.

 

Shaking with pain and fear, Raph didn’t realize what he was doing until it was done. Leo was under him, completely naked. It wasn’t sexual, Leo was naked because he was hurt. It made him a raw nerve at Raph’s mercy. He hovered over Leo, propped up on elbows and knees, not putting his full weight on him, careful of his right leg. Then Raph kissed him, slowly through shallow breaths. Fuck it, he almost died. It was wrong, it was sick. Staring into Leo’s blue eyes as he pressed his lips against his own brother’s and backed off again. Hanging there in his own personally crafted purgatory, Raph hovered inches above Leo’s face wondering what had just happened. They’d never kissed before. Raph had wanted to, not that he’d tell Leo though because there was no way they could risk acting on anything in the lair. His mind raced. This was wrong. Leo’s hands, shaking and weak, looped across the back of his shell pulling him back down. This was wrong and neither of them cared.

 

They kissed again with their eyes closed and Raph didn’t stop after a few seconds. Leo cupped his face and they opened their mouths for each other, lips locked together. Tongues slid over each other, he tasted Leo’s teeth.

 

Raph shudders at the memory. How right it felt, two puzzle pieces sliding together.

 

White is all he sees now, wandering without a destination. Every dark building wears a white wig and a grey face with one hundred lens to one hundred better lives. If only he could step off this roof and float carelessly down through one.

 

Leo whimpered into his neck when Raph’s free hand traced down between his legs, where his tail was tucked against his shell. Pain and pleasure share a blurred line. Existence is a blurred line on a grey background.

 

He stopped though, not oblivious to the power he had in that moment. Leo’s lungs were still recovering, he had lost so much muscle. Half the turtle he was before dying and somehow coming back. It would have been easy to take what he wanted. Eyes locked together, Raph’s hand was resting on his tail and Leo nodded pleadingly, he dug his fingers into Raph’s shell and bit his bottom lip when Raph obliged silently. A dirty, silent act.

 

He knows he was Leo’s first. He knows that night he took Leo’s virginity, when he was at his most vulnerable. Secretly, he likes that. He likes that Karai, if she did have him, never had him first.

 

Drunk and guilty control his left and right legs receptively. Two hours turn to three and he’s standing in front of Slash wondering what the fuck he’s doing.

 

“Your brothers are looking for you” Slash says and it’s old tired news to Raph. The whole east side is probably looking for a Raph in some shape or form by now.

 

“Do me a favor” he says shivering. “Don’t tell them I’m here”

 

Slash shrugs. “I got no dogs in this fight”. He says in the gruff tone Raph is sure doesn’t fit him. “Are you doing okay, Raphael?”

 

“I’m fine” he says looking around the place. Nothing’s changed. Much like the lair it’s a large room with sectioned off areas. “It’s just a brother thing”.

 

“Is it ever not?” he asks “Not here to see Mona?”

 

“She around?” he asks hopefully. Mona would take his mind off Leo, at least, set him straight. Too drunk to think about how it’s a temporary solution. To remember that soon she would be going back to her planet, she’d be another person who loved him then left him. She could float away while he was stuck, weighed down on earth.

 

Slash laughs. “What happened, I thought your New Year’s resolution bull crap was to quit having sex with your ex”

 

“Eh, cutting back first, baby steps” he reasons and Slash laughs harder.

 

“You’re having sex with the ex and her new boyfriend” Slash corrects.

 

Raph scowls. “What of it?”

 

“Kind of fucked up, isn’t it?”

 

“What the fuck do you know?” Raph yells and Slash backs off.

 

“Alright, easy. They’re back there” he says dropping the subject.

 

The world is spinning, he wants to get fucked and not think for a few hours. Slash’s comment hit him wrong. Not his fault. A three-way is tame.

 

Incest is a stain, a blemish, a beacon that advertises the unnatural. He had loved every second of it.

 

Mona and G'Throkka, are working on their spaceship but it only takes Raph stumbling into the workshop for them to stop and drag him away to their quarters. Mona takes his right hand, gently, and guides him away from every bad thought he’s ever had. G’Throkka, who allows Raph to call him Sal only in private, takes his left hand and he wonders why he didn’t do this on Monday instead of going to Casey’s.

 

He’s paraded past the other Mutanimals who stare on in amusement. A game they’ve all seen (and overheard) before.

 

Salamandrians have much more relaxed views when it come to sex. Kissing was an act of affection for your mate but sex was sex. Their society didn’t place it on a pedestal as something only for love. It was a base line need. That information didn’t help their relationship, he was too hooked on monogamy. He wanted her all to himself, and when she couldn’t be all his, he ended it.

 

It didn’t take him long to realize he didn’t care about her in the first place. Dating her was a poor attempt at getting over Leo. She’s too much like Leo. A leader, a fighter, morals guiding her and honor held high in her heart. How had his brothers not noticed that Leo was yearning over Karai, the female version on Raph. While Raph was chasing Leo in the form of a noble Salamandrian warrior.

 

They broke up a year ago, not that the one year they spent as a couple were all that great, and he still comes back, more often than he should so he can be sandwiched between them. So they can bleed him dry. Both so eager to empty his mind and fill his body with something nice. Something wanted. Since they were all just filling a need it was okay.

 

Mona brings out weird space drugs that feel like most euphoric parts of a heroin. Texture of dead leaves in a dry autumn, transparent flesh and purple spines. It dissolves on his tongue and he floats away out of his shell. Shock waves radiating down his nerves. Every color pops and he can see sound ripple through the air.

 

Naked and warm, Mona traces her hands down the front of his shell. She knows all the places to touch him. Drugs keep him from focusing too hard, from overthinking. They say he trips harder because he’s not a Salamandrian, his body is different. He’s so glad he’s different.

 

He doesn’t remember letting his penis drop out but Mona is rubbing his flesh, rubbing her thumb over his sensitive fanned head and he closes his eyes and imagine Leo’s vibrant green hands around his cock instead.

 

She rides his cock, he’s too high to move. It’s okay because they are bigger than him, stronger, they’ll work him like clay. The room is spinning and everything is muted, it’s snowing on his brain, silencing all his thoughts. It doesn’t matter. He closes his eyes and it’s Leo riding him and saying his name.

 

In his muted mind he’s back at the farmhouse with Leo under him, whispering praises back and forth while showing each other the most intimate parts of their being. He used his spit as lube, he took Leo into his mouth gently and avoids bumping his injured leg. Leo moaned weakly as Raph trailed his tongue up and down his cock.

 

He pulled his mouth off Leo and put his finger in Leo’s mouth. Without needing to be told Leo sucked Raph’s finger sloppily, giving him plenty of saliva to work with. As he sucked on his finger Raph felt his own touch starved dick bead with pre-cum. Using his now wet finger Raph stretched himself, prepped himself for Leo.

 

G’Throkka has lube though, his long fingers slide effortlessly into his cloaca. Raph relaxes into it. Part of it is the drugs the other part is the memory of the farmhouse. Stretching himself for Leo. Sitting on Leo’s cock and riding him. As G’Throkka enters him and Mona rides him the memory slips, fumbles out of his muted mind. Somehow now it doesn’t matter, the pleasure burns away the shame as three body rub against each other in drugged state.

 

It’s still not the most fucked up thing he’s done.

 

.

.

.

 

He’s floating too high, can’t see the water anymore. He lost days. They fell off the calendar and dissolved into the shag carpet in Casey’s hallway. Where was Casey? Numbly, blindly, he thinks he stayed with Mona and Sal longer than one night. Starving and high he marches through snow no longer in the that room. The sun is out, making the world so white he’s squinting to see. He’s not in Manhattan anymore either, everything's white. A void. It’s a new start.

 

On a rooftop in the middle of a new start he finds April. Hair pulled back in a bun, she’s wearing a t-shirt and pair of cut off jeans. She’s a fiery red beacon in a sea of bleach white.

 

“April” he calls but his tongue doesn’t move when he opens his mouth.

 

She looks over and smiles at him anyways, sitting on the snow enjoying the sun and the blue sky.

 

He sits next to her in the snow and wonders how she’s not cold.

 

“What are you doing in New York?” he asks squinting at her.

 

She smiles warm and familiar. “Came back, had to hear the rest of your story”

 

“Oh” Raph says trying to hide his confusion. “What story was that again?”

 

“The one where they destroyed their family by fucking each other” she says simply, she licks back of her hand and rubs it on her face.

 

The roof access door opens, and Raph scrambles to his feet, the snow provides no traction. He tries to tell April to run but she has already turned into an orange cat, sprinting away from the man shouting from the door.

 

Backwards speaking, the man does. Brain on standby, legs not running. Backwards access man door shouts at him, gibberish, he’s found his feet and a better place to be. The gibberish plays on a loop.

 

What happened to April he wonders, running through a muted white world. Eyeballs sloshing in the sea of chemicals that might be his brain. Why did he leave Casey’s that night?

 

Something is digging into his left forearm, three points of pressure, one on the inside of his wrist and two on the outside. He swipes at it without thinking. It hurts and it’s persistence, he’s still running from the man in the access door even though all the buildings are unfamiliar and reality crashes down on him.

 

It’s cold, his fingers ache, his teeth are chattering. Drugs, sex, drugs, sex, waking up. A distant thought broken by the memory of pain in his left forearm. He grabs his right forearm hard. Take the hint, he presses into his skin before he remembers it was the drugs and he imagined it. Leo wasn’t on the other end anymore.

 

He never would be.

 

.

.

.

 

Clouds hide the sun away by the time he’s back at Casey’s. Pounding his fist on the door, wincing and remembering Casey’s mom is probably trying to sleep. There’s no time to regret it because Leo answers the door.

 

“You’re not Emily”.

 

Leo growls, swings the door open and tackles Raph off the back step sending them both into the snow. Breath knocked out of him and sore legs under him they roll around in the snow in a symphony of grunts.

 

“You’re not Emily” Leo pants, laying on his back in the white snow. “Seriously? That’s the first thing out of your mouth?” He grabs a handful of snow and throws it at Raph.

 

Out of breath, cold, face assaulted by snow he smiles. Then he remembers and he lets the little bit of joy he felt melt off his face like the snow. “I told Casey” he pants out, staring straight up at the grey sky.

 

“I know”. Leo throws more snow at him. “Jerk”

 

“Then I got drunk and went to see Mona” he admits. He hopes none of Casey’s neighbors look outside. They’d see two monsters on their backs in the snow.

 

Leo throws more snow and Raph doesn’t even flinch.

 

“We had sex” he says shaking his head so the snow will fall off his face. “A lot of sex”. Wind chimes rattle in the distance. Across the street his brain answers, there is a hoarder with thirty tacky wind chimes hanging on their porch. Raph turns his head to look at Leo. “I got high, I talked to April but it was actually a cat”

 

There’s something sad on Leo’s face when he looks at him curiously. “Do you know what day it is Raph?” he asks with something sad in his voice. A far off worry.

 

“I don’t care what day it is”

 

“It’s Wednesday” he says sitting up in the snow to stare at the back steps instead of Raph. “You look like shit” he mumbles.

 

“Aren’t you the flatterer” Raph hums and Leo helps him up. Drags him off the muted white canvas and leads him into the house without any words.

 

He makes them tea like he’s been living in Casey’s house for a month. Mugs in the cupboard above the drainer, tea bags in a box in the pantry. Leo has his usual patrol gear on, blue mask, pads and wrappings. The well cared for katana hilts pop up from behind his shoulder.

 

“Are you going to tell them?” he asks.

 

It dawns on him that they’re the wrong color. The handles are red, deep red when they should be black. “I don’t know what you’re talking about” Raph mumbles staring at Leo trying to memorize every inch of him he can see.

 

Leo frowns. “Are you going to tell them about the farmhouse?”

 

“I don’t know”

 

“Or that you loved me?” Leo presses.

 

“I never told you that”

 

“You didn’t have to” he picks up his tea again taking a small sip.

 

Raph looks away. “I… ” he starts. “You said we were going to tell them together”

 

Leo shakes his head. “No plan ever survives contact with the enemy”

 

Tears start streaming down Raph’s face, mostly soaked up by his black mask. He retired the red one after they killed The Shredder. When they all stopped being a team.

 

“The universe dealt us a terrible hand” Leo sighs.

 

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Raph chokes out. “We made a promise”

 

“And we both broke it” Leo says solemnly. Something about his voice is wiser and steadier than it had any right to be. “The Shredder is gone, it’s time to tell them. That was the promise”

 

“You know that’s not the way it was suppose to happen”

 

“No” Leo admits. “But a promise is a promise, even if I can’t uphold my end”

 

Leo stands up and walks around the table to him and Raph can’t bare the thought of moving. “Go home Raph” he says brushing his fingers over Raph’s cheek, tracing his jaw. “Go home and tell them. If not for their right to know, then for me”

 

“I can’t”

 

“Why not?”

 

He reaches up and takes Leo’s hand away from his cheek, he’s really here, warm and breathing, he’s real. “You aren’t there anymore” he says barely above a whisper, squeezing Leo’s hand. “Nothing is the same without you there”.

 

Leo looks thoughtful for a moment. “You’re right, I tend to follow you around” he admits. “So if you go home, I’ll come with you” he says, smiling like it was a good plan.

 

Raph shakes his head and turns his face out of Leo’s hand.

 

“We’re soulmates Raph, I might be dead but we share a soul” Leo says rubbing his hand on the back of Raph’s neck. “I’m always with you, I’ll be with you when you go home and I’ll be with you when you tell them”

 

“That’s some sappy shit even for you, Leo” he says with a broken laugh.

 

“Interesting...” Leo starts all knowing giving Raph that crooked smile he does when he knows he’s right about something stupid. “Since it’s your drug trip”

 

He wakes up groggily. Tangled against Mona and Sal, their arms draped around him, he’s holding Mona’s hand, Sal’s is cupping the back of his neck. Flying out of their bed he manages to get into the bathroom before being sick. When he’s done, Mona is there rubbing his shell and saying something in her alien tongue.

 

“Bad trip?” she muses in english.

 

“Bad trip” he says, shaking as he pulls his head out of the bowl.


	3. Chapter 3

 

“ _You've reached Hamato Leonardo. Please leave your name and number after the beep...okay Don what button do I press to make that my voice- *Beep*_ ”

 

Raph puts the phone back on the receiver, digs another quarter out of his jacket and slips it into the payphone. He bummed these quarters off of Pete, saying he needed them to call his brothers. Raph must have looked as bad as he felt because Pete gave them to him with a gentle pat on the back and worry in his eyes. Which was unusual for the bird brained mutant.

 

“ _You've reached Hamato Leonardo. Please leave your name and number after the beep...okay Don what button do I press to make that my voice- *Beep*_ ”

 

Shell up against the wall he listens to Leo’s voice. He was fifteen when he recorded that. Raph had been in the room and laughed because that was his voicemail now. No one would tell him how to redo it either.

 

“ _You've reached Hamato Leonardo. Please leave your name and number after the beep...okay Don what button do I press to make that my voice- *Beep*_ ”

 

He’s not sure how long he’s been doing this but he started out with ten quarters, now he has two.

 

“ _You've reached Hamato Leonardo. Please leave your name and number after the beep...okay Don what button do I press to make that my voice- *Beep*_ ”

 

Make that one. A single worn and dirty quarter hovers above the slot.

 

The phone rings once. “ _Hello, who is this?_ ” a deep voice asks.

 

“Donnie” Raph says, knowing his brother answers unknown numbers with a voice modulator. “It’s Raph I-”

 

“ _Raph! Where are you!? Mikey! It’s Raph! We haven’t heard from you in five days where are y-_ ”

 

“If you’d can it for one second I’d tell ya, I’m outside the Defunct Futon Factory on Fifth” he says over Donnie’s ramblings.

 

Considering the background noise it sounds like Donnie put him on speaker. “ _Are you okay?_ ”

 

“Bring the Shell raiser, I can’t walk anymore tonight” he adds hanging up. Heading up the fire escape he smiles cruelly to himself.

 

“You remember this Leo?” he asks. He uses his forearms to wipe the layer of snow off of the skylight. The floor below was still dark and abandoned. “All those fricken robots we had to fight because we wouldn’t call the B-Team for help sooner”

 

Four years ago Raph thinks as he sits down against a vent coming out of the roof, leaving the view of the warehouse floor out of sight. Doesn’t matter that he’s sitting on the snow directly, his legs are too sore to get up now that he’s seated. “Now look who’s calling the B-Team to come save him” he chuckles.

 

.

.

.

 

That night neither of them slept. He didn’t hear Leo leave his bedroom, Leo was weightless when he wanted to be. So he didn’t know how long the sword wielder had been sitting on the edge of the water pool, his legs were hanging over the edge so just his toes were in the water.

 

Leo heard Raph approach him and looked over his shoulder, he looked stressed out. Both their arms still burned from fighting off two thousand robots.

 

“Trouble sleeping” Raph quietly asked and Leo nodded turning his head to stare at the water again. “Me too”

 

He joined Leo, he sat cross legged next to him instead though. “Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah” Raph lied. “Never been better, just not that tired”.

 

It didn’t feel good lying to Leo but it would have been harder to explain why he wasn’t sleeping. Raph’s brain wouldn’t shut up. That close call with the truck was enough to have him shaken up. Not only the idea of being hit by a truck but the way Leo had reacted. He had ran over and grabbed Raph by the shoulders. He had looked scared, but Raph caught his breath and said “That was so much fun”.

 

Leo loosened his grip, the seriousness of the situation had been diffused with a joke. He helped Raph up to his feet as more robots streamed down the alley into the street. “It’s almost too much fun” Leo added as they took to sprinting away.

 

He didn’t think too hard about it because it was a brotherly reaction. Nearly being hit by a car scares anyone involved.

 

Then it got… weird.

 

They electrocuted a bunch of robots and Raph found himself watching Leo jump from robot head to robot head with light feet and perfect balance. He watched his brother spin and flip, slicing any robots that lunged at him. It wasn’t in jealousy, Raph didn’t want to be Leo, but damn was that cool in a confusing way.

 

No way he wanted to explain that to Leo, no way he ever could. Even he wasn’t sure it was anything. He just didn’t want to sleep when his brain seemed to be fixated on it.

 

“You don’t have to lie Raph” Leo said with a hint of annoyance. “A truck almost hit you, I think your'e allowed to be a little shaken up”

 

“Never said I wasn’t shaken up” Raph argued. “Just said I couldn’t sleep”

 

Leo kicked some water with his toes in response.

 

“Why? Did it shake you up?” Raph asked trying to sound smug.

 

“No” Leo lied. His voice wavered and Raph smirked.

 

“What happened to being Fearless?”

 

“Shut up” Leo snapped as he whipped his head around to glare at him. “This isn’t funny Raph”

 

Raph did shut up, taken a little aback by the reaction, but he knew better than to say something else. Their fights, real or not (and mostly they were not) did tend to wake the whole lair up. He had a good feeling if they started a scuffle here they’d both end up soaked and yelled at by Sensei. “Okay, okay” he said instead and Leo went back to looking at the water.

 

Then Leo asked something extremely unexpected. “Will you stay up with me for a little bit?” he mumbled.

 

Raph didn’t answer, but he also didn’t leave. The weird feeling he had from earlier didn’t help.

 

It would be a while before he realized that’s what a crush feels like.

 

.

.

.

 

A sharp sting across the face jolts him awake.

 

“Oh thank shell!” Donnie sighs in relief.

 

“See” Mikey’s voice says pointedly. “Nothing a good smack can’t solve”

 

“That’s not how medical- Why do I bother. Raph, come on” Donnie loops an arm around him and Mikey follows suit. “Can you walk?”

 

“Yeah” Raph says and they let go of him slightly. Stumbling forward one step before falling, unable to catch himself.

 

“That’s not how you walk” Mikey says and they both come up behind him and heft him up. “Let the professionals handle it”

 

He makes light of it but Raph knows his baby brother is trying to focus on the frivolous. Making fun of Raph’s inability to walk and not of his relapse into drugs.

 

Tricky work, maneuvering him down a fire escape and into the Shellraiser. He’s dumped in his usual spot, manning weapons, even if he’s going to be zero help if something decides to attack them. Donnie sits at his computer and Mikey drives. Irrational anger bleeds through his hangover, he wants to get up and drag Mikey out of Leo’s seat, ask him who the hell thought it was a good idea for him to be driver.

 

Then he remembers that it was him and Donnie, who stood around him with white knuckles as they taught him to drive. How Donnie said it was most logical to have Mikey driving since he spent two years in the back looking at all the maps. He remembers how after he successfully navigated the parking lot cone maze he quietly asked Raph if Leo would be upset that he had taken his spot while he was gone. Raph had almost smacked him upside the head, but last second he turned it into a noogie and told him no.

 

Raph stops staring daggers at the back of Mikey’s head. Mikey is nineteen, he’s matured up, he doesn’t mow down things for fun. They’ve all changed. He closes his eyes instead.

 

Mikey’s been the driver of the Shellraiser longer than Leo ever was.

 

He closes his eyes tighter, squeezing the burn out of them.

 

.

.

.

 

He was out of breath still sitting on his older brothers cock when they both realized what they’d just done. His left hand was on Leo’s waist, the other was still on his own dick along with Leo’s. In five seconds they went from gripping and thrusting to seizing and then...then after the fog cleared one fact remained.

 

Raph just fucked his own brother.

 

Leo seemed to come back to reality too because he put his free hand over his face in shame and carefully retracted the one that was helping Raph to the 'finish line'. Without saying a word he dismounted and tucked himself back into his shell. He went to the bathroom, grabbed a few towels and wash cloths and returned. For the first time ever he closed the door and locked it. If anyone walked in on him helping Leo clean up, there would be no explanation.

 

They already took a horrible risk doing it in the first place with the door just shut. What if Mikey had come up to investigate what was taking Raph so long?

 

Leo had sat up, re-positioning himself to be seated on the edge of the bed. He took one of the wet wash cloths and cleaned off his penis while Raph wiped his own cum off of the front of Leo’s shell. They worked in a dead silence. Once their bodies were clean, Raph helped Leo back into his wheelchair and stripped the sheets off the bed.

 

With ninja stealth Raph put in a load of laundry without waking anyone up. Grabbed fresh sheets and remade Leo’s bed. The whole time Leo stared at the floor with a death grip on the arms of his wheelchair.

 

“Raph” Leo whispered.

 

“No one will know. I took care of it” he whispered back harshly. His hands were shaking when he went to help Leo back into the bed.

 

Leo grabbed his wrists. “Why did you do that?” he whispered frantically, on the brink of a mental breakdown.

 

“Why did _I_ do that? You could of told me to get off at any moment” Raph snarled right into his face and Leo uncharacteristically looked away back to the floor with no response.

 

He just stared at the floor and sucked air through his teeth.

 

“Don’t you even try to fucking pin this on me” Raph hissed. He broke free of Leo taking a step back. “I don’t like you”

 

Leo cringed at the last statement but snapped his head up to glare at Raph. “Then what was that?”

 

“I don’t know Leo, what was it? You were there too, you wanna tell me why you didn’t stop it?” he said a little louder than a whisper.

 

Not knowing how to talk himself out of it Leo turned away with disgust. “I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking”

 

“That’s on you then” Raph huffed crossing his arms.

 

When Leo didn’t respond and the silence settled back into the room Raph decided to just get it over with. Gently enough to not hurt him, but no where near lovingly careful, Raph helped Leo into bed. His wrists weren’t caught in an unsuspecting iron grip. Leo made no comments even, he just continued to look everywhere but at Raph.

 

“We both fucked up… and we’ll just pretend it never happened” he said. He pulled the covers over Leo who had one hand rested across his eyes “So shut up and go to b-”

 

Then he noticed the slight shaking in Leo’s shoulders.

 

“Are you crying? Are you seriously crying, what the hell Leo. Her we go, you’re gonna beat yourself up for the next month, _poor me_ -”

 

“You don’t know shit, Raphael” Leo hissed out. “I didn’t stop you because, because I wanted it!”

 

He wiped his face on the back of his arm and looked up at the ceiling.

 

“And I’ve wanted it for a while! Is that what you want to hear?” he asked harshly, now looking right into Raph’s eyes. “You know how wrong this is!? We’re brothers and we just had...we just had...and-”

 

“What do you mean you’ve wanted this?”

 

Leo put his hand back over his face. “Just leave, Raph. This is so messed up”

 

So he did, he slammed the door behind him too. Not caring if he woke anyone up. Not caring that Leo broke down into full on sobbing as he walked to his own room.

 

The next day at the breakfast table Donnie asked about the laundry and Raph felt his breath hitch.

 

“I had an accident” Leo said quietly, his face was red. “Raph helped me... clean up”

 

His jaw nearly fell off his face hearing Leo say that in front of their friends and younger brothers. Proud, stoic, never needs help leader Leo just eluded to the idea that he shit the bed to cover their secret.

 

Luckily Donnie had been sympathetic. “Don’t be embarrassed Leo, you’ve been in a coma for months, it takes some time to get used to being awake”

 

It was dropped pretty quickly, but Raph under the table gripped his left forearm. A single digging pain came in on his right forearm moments later.

 

That’s the most they ever talked about it. It was just added to the list of things they never brought up.

 

Because that’s the way it had to be.

 

.

.

.

 

Waking up in the pit was jarring. He didn’t remember getting out of the Shellraiser, and now he was lying on his shell with one of Donnie’s electric blankets tucked around him. Crud threatened to glue his eyes shut but he cracks them open anyways to be immediately blinded by the sun creeping through the main skylight.

 

He yawns and stretches and listens. None of the lights are on, but the door to Donnie’s lab is cracked open and the telltale sounds of welding can be heard. He works in silence mostly, Raph doesn’t understand how he does it. Raph needs music, or the television. Something to fill the air around him. Right now it’s the sparks flying are his only salvation against intruding thoughts.

 

Wading through the lair into Donnie's lab the genius looks up once but doesn’t stop his work. So Raph sits down on the other side of his desk and takes a thumb to the corner of his eyes, picking the dried crust of sleep away.

 

“I… I need to talk to you two” he says when Donnie puts down the torch to examine his work.

 

Donnie takes the piece to another table. “And what would it be about?” he asks still more focused on his metal. One of his Metal Head clones, Raph thinks this one is named The Shellinator, sings out a few beeps and chirps. “The legs can be the same as yours, use your own schematics as reference” he says as if the beeps were perfect English. “The arms...” Donnie hesitates “I have plans for the arms”.

 

The Shellinator beeps lowly.

 

“Maybe they will be more advanced than yours” Donnie says back in jest. “Jealously isn’t a good color on you Shelly”

 

Raph sighs, folds his arm onto Donnie’s desk and puts his face into his elbow.

 

“Here” Donnie says a few moments later, two pills are placed in front of him on the desk. “Take those, should help with the headache”

 

Tiredly he picks up the pills and swallows them dry. “Thanks, you make those?”

 

“Did I invent Tylenol?” Donnie asks lightly “No”

 

“Smart ass”

 

Donnie just smirks.

 

“Where’s Mikey?” he asks.

 

“I believe he was going to visit Shini, then he said he would help make the manhole shell for T3PO”

 

“T3PO?” Raph asks before shaking his head. “Whatever, I can’t decide if that’s better or worse than The Shellinater”

 

Donnie shrugs. “As long as he’s willing to make those shells he can name everyone of them. What did you want to talk to us about anyways?”

 

“I-”

 

“I mean aside from going M-I-A for a week and a half, getting so high we had to carry you home-” Donnie starts rattling off.

 

“We get it!” Raph snaps. “And yeah, that’s what I want to talk about...sorta”

 

“Sorta? What is that suppose to mean? Are you going to apologize for punching Mikey in the face by the way? What was that even about Raph? You haven’t lost your temper like that in years!-”

 

“I’ll explain when Mikey gets back”. That thought causes his throat to seize a little, he doesn’t even know where to begin. This wasn’t his specialty. Conflict resolution is what Leo would call it. Or at least when both sides were somewhat right. Otherwise it was I’m Leader Stop Being Idiots Resolution. Raph doesn’t think he has the power to pull that card.

 

Mikey comes home about fifteen minutes later with Chicken dumpling soup and some pizza calzones. They eat in Donnie’s lab because Donnie is one of those fidgety moods where he had to be working with his hands. It’s amazing, watching Donnie create things in a haze. A caffeine fueled haze that is, buzzing around his lab eagerly. Silence fills the room he works in but inside his thoughts must be roaring.

 

As he eats at Donnie desk with Mikey, he thinks about how much they’ve changed. How close his two younger sibling became, it was so sudden it just seemed like one day Mikey became Donnie’s helper out of nowhere. It hurt when they pointed out that it didn’t. Raph had just been gone so often he never noticed.

 

“I’m sorry I punched you” Raph says after a few spoonfuls of soup. “I just...did you guys find anything by the way?”

 

Mikey looks at him sadly. “No, and look Raph, we aren’t mad at you for punching me, well actually Donnie is still kinda mad, oh and Shini is mad now that I think about, I might have told Karai. The email I got back from April wow, good thing she went to college out of state-”

 

“Thanks Mikey” Raph deadpans.

 

“No problamo” Mikey says with no concern in his voice, happily stabbing a pizza calzone and popping it into his mouth.

 

Donnie walks over to them and sits behind his desk in his padded chair, hunger seemingly winning over his need to build. “So Raph, I think it’s time you talk”

 

His younger brothers look at him expectantly, Mikey with a more warm expression, Donnie’s more critical and dissecting. As if there was no way he could explain his actions.

 

So Raph goes in with the big gun first. “Leo is dead, he died August ninth two thousand fourteen”

 

“Don’t start this again just because-” Donnie starts pointing an accusatory spoon at Raph, a little drop of liquid hits his forehead.

 

“He’s my soulmate” Raph blurts out numbly and Donnie drops the spoon with a clang on his desk. “Leo is my- well, was my soulmate”

 

They don’t say anything. He’s looking straight into Donnie’s hazel eyes, watching as they go from angry to shocked.

 

“I felt him die” Raph continues and he doesn’t dare look at Mikey now. If he does he might not be able to keep talking. “I felt him die that night, a few minutes after I was kicked off the roof”

 

“That’s not-”

 

“Possible?” Raph finishes. “We thought so too. Look, I don’t care whether you believe me or not, Casey didn’t at first...but I can’t take it anymore”. He turns to look at Mikey. “When I punched you, it was because you said I had given up on Leo and it made me mad-”

 

“You really expect us to believe this?” Donnie interrupts. “Are you insane? You were soulmates with Leo, therefore you knows he’s dead, therefore we can stop looking for him?”

 

He can’t form words, then something overcomes him. Laughter spills out and he can’t stop it, he pushes his chair back from Donnie's desk so he can double over. His chest hurts.

 

Mikey tackles him. “What the fuck is wrong with you!” he screams. They collide and take the chair with them to the ground, Mikey throws punches and all Raph can seem to manage is blocks while he continues to laugh. “Stop laughing!” he screams.

 

“I can’t!” he wheezes out.

 

“Nothing about this is funny!”

 

“No, you’re right, this is hysterical” Raph hollers. “You see for years we thought one wrong move would out us” he over powers Mikey and take the upper hand “one wince with no explanation” he pins Mikey to the floor “and you’d all find out and that would be the fucking end”

 

Fruitlessly Mikey tries to get out from under him. “Get off of me”. Donnie starts pulling on his shell trying to lift his weight off Mikey. His lanky brother doesn’t have the strength for it and Mikey is pinned in a way that he can’t push up to help.

 

“And now, wouldn’t you know it? Now that I finally tell ya, you guys call me a liar!” he roars with the laughter gone from his voice. His little brother stops squirming and his face falls. “Are you seeing this Leo? We didn’t even need to hide it, they didn’t want to see it in the first place” he shouts up into the ceiling and Donnie takes the opportunity to throw him off of Mikey.

 

Everything hurts, his chest feels like it’s caving in but he stands up and looks at his younger brothers, Mikey still on the floor with Donnie standing protectively in front of him. “You done?” he asks threateningly.

 

“Yeah” Raph pants. “I’ve said all I wanted to say”

 

Donnie puts his bow back and Mikey stands up. They share a glance before looking back at Raph. “How can you expect us to believe you?” Mikey asks finally.

 

“I can’t” he admits. “But I also can’t keep listening to you two pretend he’s out there somewhere. Leo is dead, he’s been dead for a while. And I think you two know it, you just don’t want to face it”

 

“Okay” Donnie says with resignation. “I had a feeling there was no way he could have survived...I guess I just hoped because we never found a body that he was still out there”

 

Raph nods tightly. “I know”

 

“Mikey?” Donnie asks turning back to look at their orange banded brother who was being unusually silent. He looked up at Donnie then at Raph and then walked straight up to him, jaw clenched lips trembling. He’s a little taller than Raph, by an inch. It’s easy to forget when they never stand close to each other anymore. Mikey throws his arms around Raph and pulls him into a hug, burying his face into his neck.

 

Uncertainly he returns the hug and feels a third set of hands join and Donnie set his chin on the top of Raph’s head.

 

“We’re still mad at you” Donnie mumbles.

 

“Yeah” Mikey agrees.

 

He doesn’t know how long they stand there hugging. It would never be long enough.

 

.

.

.

 

The situation was too messed up and twisted to fully recover from. Lying for years, then lying for years to hide the first lie, so they compromised. They all agreed on a few things.

 

One, Leo needed a proper funeral. Even if they didn’t have a body to bury, they still wanted a headstone. Donnie, with Raph's permission, contacted April about the situation asking if it would be okay with her if they put yet another grave at her farmhouse. So Leo can lay to rest next to their father. Mikey starts working on designing the headstone, he made their father’s after all, designing the small statue of Splinter holding his staff.

 

Two, Mikey and Donnie would stop searching for Leo. Instead they would all keep feelers out for his body. It didn’t feel right, the idea of Leo’s corpse being dissected by scientists, or being stuffed and put in some weird museum. So if Leo’s body was out there, they would bring it home. All three of them would bring him home.

 

Three, they could ask Raph anything. Which meant Raph decided what version of his story he was going to stick with. It was a little too complicated, the first and only time they had sex wasn’t special. Yet their agreement to tell their family after they defeated Shredder was based on that split second decision. As far as Donnie and Mikey were concerned they never so much as kissed (outside brothers kissing each other goodnight on the cheek when they were kids). Leo and Raph just decided that maybe, one day, they could open up the conversation of being more that brothers. Certain circumstances had obviously prevented any development in that area.

 

It was easier to lie. The truth made Leo's death sadder. It was easier to have his brothers believe they hadn't thought further than "maybe". That they hadn't both been eager to stop playing the game.

 

As the days passed since the secret was out, they each poured themselves into their own tasks. Donnie planned out a date for Leo’s actual funeral, and how to get everyone there. He also made a legitimate sounding excuse as to why they were now putting Leo to rest. It was simply time to move on. Raph thought that was a little too easy but Donnie seemed certain.

 

“Funeral aren’t for the dead, Raph. They’re for the living” he explained. “Our friends will be glad we are moving on”

 

For safety, and to avoid painful question, Leo and Raph’s terrible secret is only know to their brothers, April, and Casey. It would be too difficult to explain to anyone else.

 

As the days tick down to Leo’s funeral, Raph stays away from Mona and Sal. He goes out on patrol solo, much to Donnie's disapproval. There’s something freeing about it that he can’t explain. The way beating up small gangs almost reminds him of the good days. He comes home with scratches and he considers making more armor, less ninja, more vigilante.

 

Mikey delays his trip with Leatherhead but as a result spends more time over at the Mighty Mutanimals base than home. When he is home he works mostly with Donnie. Rarely is there a time when all three of them are in their home at once, they shift past each other like submarines. On each other's radars, but with their own destinations.

 

.

.

.

 

Something akin to jealousy had rested on his shoulders when he watched Leo take Karai's hand as he asked her everything about The Shredder's base. He knew why, it was expected of him to be close to her. To rub his thumb over her knuckles and let her rasp out information that they should have had month ago. Leaned up against the shit yellow walls of the hospital forced to babysit the door while Leo and Karai had a moment.

 

Mikey jumped on the interaction, teasing Leo lightly when they left out the fire escape. The attempts to rib him fell of deaf ears, Leo had a plan and a far off stare as he drove the shellraiser back to the lair. Mikey's comments did have an effect on Raph though.

 

"Knock it off shellhead" he shouted back at Mikey who was spinning in his chair bored out of his shell. "Would ya quit talking about that brat?"

 

Mikey stopped and frowned. "She's Sensei's daughter, dude...not a brat"

 

"You're right Mikey" he quipped back, something nasty in his voice. "That would make Leo her brother, isn't that a little weird?"

 

Leo's shoulders stiffened.

 

"Oh no" Mikey muttered as the atmosphere in the vehicle quickly changed.

 

"Guys, not here, not now-" Donnie tried before Raph opened his mouth again.

 

"I'm just saying, what would Dad think about this Leo?" he mused aloud. "About his son getting busy with his daughter?"

 

"You know it's not like that Raph. Karai isn't even really related to us!" Mikey argued.

 

"More like third or fourth cousins" Donnie said as if that made it any less weird. "But that's not the point you guys. This isn't the time for you two to get all broody at each other. Our father is dead, The Shredder is still out there. Is this really the conversation we should be having right now?"

 

Leo pulled into the garage and put the Shellraiser into park with a jerk. He turned in his chair to face them. "Donnie's right" he said calmly. "We need to focus on the information Karai gave us". He then looked directly at Raph for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

 

"They're going to fight" Donnie announced as he got up and left, Mikey followed quickly behind. "I'll be in my lab when you two need to be patched up" he called as he walked away.

 

They didn't break eye contact, Raph wanted Leo to squirm under his stare but instead he gave the same steely look back. "You really think I have something for Karai?" he asked. "You think I have a crush on her? You think I like her?"

 

"I do". He crossed his arms over his chest and sneered. "You gonna deny it Fearless?"

 

Leo got up and so did Raph, they met in the middle inches apart both twitching with anger. They were nearly the same height, but Raph was broader, he took up more space compared to Leo. These days, no weapons, close quarters, Raph wins the fight. "Why would I ever love a hot head like her?" he asked before turning and leaving.

 

He stood alone for a long time after that. Trying to decipher the pit in his stomach and the pressure in his throat.

 

.

.

.

 

His funeral was on a mild day in May. The Mutanimals, Karai and her girlfriend Shini, April, Casey, almost every friend they had made over the years who knew Leo came to see his headstone. Even the friends they made after Leo death’s came in support, only knowing him from stories and word of mouth.

 

Donnie did the eulogy, it’s only fitting. He was the head of the family now, even if he claimed it was all three of them holding each other up like a dysfunctional tripod. It was a lie. Donnie was their backbone now. Raph thinks he’ll find a way to express his gratitude one day.

 

Stories were told, Karai told a few funny ones. Mikey silently cried through the whole thing, his two older brothers on either side of him with their arms over his shoulders. In a way it was worse than their father’s funeral. Many expressed their sadness about how young their brother was when he died and it brought up a new batch of emotions in Raph. Emotions he didn’t know he had about Leo. Robbed of having a life. Less than two months away from turning seventeen. It was unimaginable to think that their last birthday as four was their sixteenth.

 

When the funeral ended it was just the main five left. April stuck around until sunset, then Casey drove her home. Leaving just the three of them a the farmhouse with two dead family members outside.

 

“I kind of miss the farmhouse” Mikey says when they head inside. The plan was too leave in the morning, no one wanted to drive after an emotionally draining funeral.

 

“Uhg, I sure don’t” Donnie laments with a shiver. “Remember Bigfoot?”

 

“I’ll never forget” Mikey says happily. “What are we doing for dinner”

 

“I picked up frozen pizza, figured no one would be too picky about what we have today”

 

“Pizza sounds good to me!” Mikey says.

 

Raph shrugs. “Why the hell not”

 

Their brother disappears into the kitchen and Mikey finds something to watch on TV.

 

“I’m gonna look around” he tells Mikey before heading up the stairs. His little brothers seems unconcerned, possibly more interested in finding a distraction.

 

Part of him had been worried about coming back to the farmhouse. Seeing their father’s grave again was daunting, but something about being here without Leo was even worse. Entering the bathroom and looking at the tub Leo spent four months marinating in didn’t make him feel anything though.

 

Looking back on that winter, when he was petrified by the absence of pain he felt while Leo was in a coma, he thought that was the worst thing that could happen. Leo would die in his sleep and he would never be able to tell him he was tired of pretending they hated each other.

 

He’s just numb now. What he would give for Leo to be just in a coma.

 

Then he would be a prisoner of hope, just as Mikey and Donnie had been. He can’t decide if he really did them a favor or a disservice by pulling back that curtain. Maybe letting them live out the rest of their lives hoping was better than stomping it out. Or maybe being able to move on, while it hurts now, would be the path towards a better life.

 

Raph enters Leo’s old room. It’s dusty and untouched, probably like his actual bedroom. He gets on the bed and lies down. Hands under his head he stares up at the ceiling. It’s wooden, the grain makes pictures. A horse with three legs about four feet from the top of the window frame. Leo had pointed it out to him, said he found a lot of pictures since he was on bed rest for a while.

 

“RAPH! PIZZA’S READY!” Mikey hollers.

 

.

.

.

 

Of course he found Leo first. Because after wandering around in the woods on a vision quest, battling his own mind the first brother he wanted to see was stoic Leo.

 

He looked tired and determined. His face lit up when he saw Raph and they walked right up to each other as if to make sure they were real. Nothing had to be said about what they faced.

 

“I swear, after we take down The Kraang...mosquitos” Raph lamented. “They’re next”

 

“Not enjoying nature are we” Leo quipped. “Just think, in a few days we will be back in the sewers where we belong”

 

They set up camp, made a fire. It was a clear night so they didn’t worry about rain. Raph had some fish, so they gutted them and held them on sticks over the fire. Neither of the turtles were cooks so their fish turned out extra crunchy with a questionably rare inside.

 

It was Leo who tried to make conversation. “Are you worried about going back to New York?”

 

What a weird question for him to ask Raph thought but kept to himself. “Fuck no” he grunts. “We’ll kick The Kraang's ass”

 

Leo nodded, not wanting to push it. He pokes the fire a little. “Then what?”

 

“Then The Shredder’s. What the fuck kind of questions are these?”

 

The fire died down and Raph relaxes in it’s warmth. His leg aches, he figure it always will. Leo’s leg healed but the pain lingered, a bad memory that refused to die.

 

They don’t talk about it.

 

“I was thinking about after we kill The Shredder” Leo started again, he looked at Raph uncertainly. “I was thinking about us...you know”

 

Raph felt his heart speed up, he didn’t like where this conversation was heading.

 

“Once he’s gone, we could stop this-”

 

“I don’t like you” he blurted out. It comes out loud so it sounded aggressive. The words bounced off the trees and Leo goes back to prodding the fire without a reaction. “So shut the fuck up about whatever you're thinking”

 

“I’m just thinking about how much you seemed to enjoy having my cock up your ass” Leo bites back through gritted teeth. “That’s weird seeing as you don’t like me”

 

Raph leapt over the fire at him without hesitation but Leo had expected it, jumping back out of reach unsheathing a single katana with a shit eating grin.

 

“All the little noises you made” Leo taunted, silent on his feet despite all the dry and dead leaves around. “Uhhnngg” he mimicked throatily and Raph saw red.

 

“Shut the fuck up!”

 

“Why don’t you make me?” Leo asked, skirting out of his reach.

 

This was how Leo started fights. A little teasing and Raph was always sucked in before he realized he did exactly what the manipulative bastard had wanted.

 

Right then Leo wanted Raph to kick the crap out of him and he was going to oblige. A frustrating game of cat and mouse around a mostly snuffed out fire took place before they finally clashed. The fight started off with weapons, and they were evenly matched.

 

Slowly they both lost one of their weapons, then the whole set. Then it was just fists and kicks.

 

He slammed Leo onto the ground and felt the impact thunder up his tail bone. Leo had his finger digging into a pressure point and Raph gurgled out a scream. He bears his weight down on Leo more, it hurts but he doesn’t care.

 

“I don’t want to do this anymore” Leo grunted. “I hate this, I hate what we are and I hate that the best thing that ever happened between us make us both so guilty”

 

Again, they were on top of each other, way to close, but at least Leo was clothed. Raph paused, still breathing hard. Still buzzing with the sting of their fight. He didn’t have a response.

 

“Just tell me one thing” Leo yelled. “Do you like me? Or am I broken? Because I’ve had weird feelings about you since we were thirteen and no matter what I do they won’t go away”

 

“You’re sick” Raph barked back right into his face and Leo composure shattered. It stabbed Raph in the heart for a second. Their foreheads were almost pressed together. “I didn’t start crushing on you until I was fifteen” he said quieter.

 

It broke the tension and Raph rolled off him, so they could lay side by side bloody and sore twice over. Leo wiped the blood from his face and turned his head to look at Raph.

 

“Kill The Shredder, then...” Raph trailed off not sure if he wanted to say it.

 

“...then we stop pretending?” Leo finished.

 

"No" Raph said looking up at the sky instead of at Leo.

 

"No?"

 

"I don't love you" Raph said.

 

"I don't love you either"

 

"Exactly". The fire goes out and Raph closed his eyes for a different type of darkness. "But if we tell anyone, that's it. Everything is over, they'll never see us as brothers again...they'll just see us as mistakes"

 

The way Leo doesn't say anything told Raph he was right. He didn't want to be right, he wanted a plan. He wanted Leo to have a fucking plan. "We did this to ourselves" Leo sighed out. "The more I think about it we should've ran to Splinter the second we found out"

 

"Why the fuck would we do that?"

 

"Because whatever punishment he would have given us...it wouldn't be half as bad as what we did to hide it from everyone".

 

It was a cool night, and it was quiet. There were no animals around, there was no fire, only the stars and Leo presence a few feet away. How long they laid there letting bruises form on their arms and knuckles, he doesn't know. He doesn't want to keep talking to Leo about soulmates.

 

"What happens after we tell them, if we did?" Raph asked quietly. Not really wanting to know the answer.

 

"Whatever we want" Leo said simply like it would be that easy and Raph huffs. "Seriously, we used to be best friends"

 

"And how much of it was real and how much of it was because we were soulmates?"

 

"Does it matter? That's our problem Raph, we were so caught up in not being soulmates that we forget that barely anyone ends up with theirs. Look at Sensei, look at all the celebrities and famous people who find the love of their lives even though they aren't soulmates. Just because we know our soulmates doesn't mean we have to be together. If we don't like each other like that...we can just choose to not be together." Leo props himself up and finds Raph in the darkness before continuing. "We could kill The Shredder and tell our family and just be brothers. We could choose to be brothers before being soulmates"

 

"You're forgetting the part where we had sex" Raph huffed. "You forgot the part where we both admitted we have crushes on each other"

 

"I assumed we were going to put that away with all the other things we don't talk about"

 

"What if we should talk about it?" Raph asked.

 

"Do you want to?"

 

"No"

 

"Me either"

 

"But maybe one day...we should" Raph added.

 

Leo turned his head and looked at him, the sun was down it was hard to see his face. "After we kill The Shredder".

 

.

.

.

 

They ate pizza and watched Crognard in a pile on the couch. Mikey sandwiched between Raph and Donnie, there eyes glazing over with exhaustion.

 

“Remember when Leo made us take home that mutant wasp egg and guarded it?”

 

Both Donnie and Raph slowly looked over at their younger brother as if he grew a second head.

 

“And we tried doing all the things that would annoy him enough to make him stop. I rubbed his Space Heroes comic book on my butt” Mikey says nostalgically. “He was so mad”

 

Donnie chuckles after a moment. “Oh yeah he was, mad Leo was always a treat to watch”

 

“Oh remember when he hit on that alien and then got chased by a giant” Mikey adds. That’s when Raph catches on.

 

“Yeah, poor bastard was always attracted to bad girls” he says.

 

A mischievous smile spreads across Donnie’s face. “Makes sense, seeing who his soulmate was”

 

Raph reaches over and smacks him lightly and laughs. “You calling me a bad girl?”

 

“The baddest around” Mikey teases blocking a smack from Raph. “Man this is all coming full circle no wonder he was all gah gah for Karai!”

 

“Yeah, their both impulsive angry hot heads!” Donnie says.

 

“And they’re both related to him!”

 

Raph screw his face up. “What is this, roast me day?”

 

“That’s everyday”

 

“Hey! Wait a-”

 

“Oh remember the speeches?” Donnie asks. “He had me print out so many Captain Ryan speeches. I’m sure he memorized them all”

 

Mikey blows air out of his mouth. “Dude, you have to master the art of zoning out during those”

 

“Didn’t we have to call him Captain Ryan when we were in space?” Raph asks.

 

Donnie shakes his head. “He didn’t make us, we just did hoping to embarrass him and he loved it so much April threatened us bodily harm if we stopped”

 

“Figures, he was a dork” Raph says lovingly. “He was way too obsessed with that show”

 

“You think he was ever one of those weirdos who wrote Space Heroes fan-fiction?”

 

They sit in silence for a beat before all of them say “yes” in unison.

 

“I once overheard him tell his katanas they did good during training” Donnie starts them up again.

 

“How old was he?” Raph and Mikey ask at the same time.

 

Donnie smiles. “Fourteen”

 

They laugh hard at that one. It was such an odd moment. There was something untouchable about the dead, after hearing stories about Leo being brave and stoic it was nice to remember the weird things. The things that made him their brother. His fear of public restroom. His inability to cook anything without burning it or breaking the appliance he made it with. The fact that Leo couldn’t come up with a convincing lie to save his life and Sensei used it against them so many times.

 

Crognard became white noise as they nodded off to sleep on the couch. No one wanted to go to bed alone tonight anyways.

 

.

.

.

 

Morning finds them as a pile of limbs and sore shells on the couch. They pack up and get ready to leave. The air is more somber than it was last night. Something final about leaving now.

 

“Alright” Mikey says “We’re going to get breakfast on the way back, you want anything?”

 

Raph had taken the stealth bike out and would be driving it back in but he waves Mikey off. “Nah, you two go ahead”

 

Donnie and Mikey give him a look.

 

“Go on, I’ll be right behind you I just need a moment” he says.

 

They hug him before leaving, he’s still not used to it, all the touching as of late. He waves them off and makes sure the Shellraiser is out of sight before turning and walking to Leo’s grave. All he can hear are the gently chirps of birds as he steps on wet morning dew coated grass.

 

Alone he stands in front of Leo’s grave. The little statue Mikey designed was a humanoid turtle, in Leo proportions, if he was five inches tall. He was sitting on his legs in the pose he often meditated in. When Raph had asked Mikey why that pose he said it was suppose to represent his spirit. Mikey hoped that in death, Leo was at peace with the universe.

 

Raph takes a step forward and crouches in front on the grave, he presses the center of his forehead against the head of Leo’s statue. Feeling the cool stone on his head he sighs.

 

They’ll be okay he thinks. Eventually. Maybe they’ll never be four again, and maybe they won’t get along as smoothly, but they’ll be okay. Leo had been a natural leader, he taught them more than he’ll ever know but they can lead themselves now. They could do right by his memory.

 

For a moment he feels something warm press against his forehead.

 

“Goodbye Big Brother Best Friend” he whispers. “Until we meet again”.


End file.
